The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1887-05-18

Pass out and pass down the street. Our
cities of Brooklyn and New York and all our
great cities are full of such homes, and the
worst time the third watch of the night
Do You know it is in this third watch Of the
niilt that criminals do their worst worki
1t Z the criminals watch.
At $50 O'Clock you viii find them in the
drinking saloon, but toward II they go to
their garrets, they get out their tools, then
they start on the street. Watching on either
side for the police, they 20 TO their work OF
darkness. This is a burglar, and the false
key win soon touch the store lock This is an
incendiary, and before morning there VIII be
light on the sky and cry of "Firei freI'
This is an assassin, and tomorrow morning
there will be dead body in one of the vacant
lots. During the daytime these villains in
our cities lounge about, some asleep and some
awake but when the third watch of the night
arrives, their eye keen, their brain cool, their
arm strong, their foot feet to fly or pursue,
they are ready.
Many of these poor creatures were brought
ND in that way. They were born ia a thieves
garnet. Their childish toy was a burglars
dark lantern. The first thing they remember
was their mother bandaging the brow of their
father, struck by the police club. They be-
gan by robbing boys pockets, and now they
have come to dig the underground passage to
the cellar of the bank and are preparing to
blast the gold vault.
Just so long as there are neglected children
of the street just so long we will have these
desperadoes. Some one, wishing to make
good Christian point and to quote passage
of Scripture, expecting to get Scriptural
passage in answer, said to one of these poor
lads, cast out and wretched: when your IA
Their and your mother forsake you, who then
viii take you upY" And the boy said: 1.-THE
perlicel the perlice!"
In the third watch Of the night gambling
does its worst work. What though the hours
| be slipping away, and though the wife be
| waiting in the cherries homei Stir up the
| fire. Bring on more drinks. Put up more
stakes That commercial. house that only
little while ago put out sign of copartnership,
| will this winter be wrecked on a gamblers
table There win be many a money till that
will spring leak. A member of congress
| gambled with a member elect and won
| $4,000 The old way of getting a liv-
| ing is so slow The old way of getting q
fortune is so stupid. Come, let US toss
I'D and see who shall have it, And so the
work goes on, from the wheeling wretches
pitching pennies in a rum grocery up to the
| millionaire gambler in the stock market
In the third watch of the night, pass down
| the streets OF these cities, and you hear the
click of the dice and the sharp, keen stroke Of
| the ball on the billiard table At these places
| merchant princes dismount, and legislators,
| tired of making laws, take a respite, in
| breaking them. All classes of people are
robbed by this crime-the importer of for
eign silks and the dealer in Chatham street
| pocket handkerchiefs The clerks of the
store take a hand after the shutters are put
~ IL
their time while the jury is out.
In Baden-B Baden, when that city was the
greatest of all gambling places on earth, it
was no unusual thing the next morning, in
the woods around about the city, to find the
suspended bodies of suicides. Whatever be
the splendor of surroundings, there is no ex-
| cuse for this crime. The thunders of eternal
destruction roll in the deep rumble of that
| gambling tenpin alley, and as men come out
to join the long procession of sin, all the
| drums of death beat the dead march of a
| thousand souls.
In one year, in the city of New York, there
were s., 000, 900 sacrificed at the gaming table.
Perhaps some of your friends have been
smitten of this sin. Perhaps some Of you
have been smitten by it.
Perhaps there may be a stranger in the
house this morning come from some of the
| nOuel5. LOOK OUT IOr tuOSe agents VI inquiry
who tarry around about the hotels and ask
you: AWould you like to see the city" Eyes.
4Have you ever been in that splendid build
ing up town." "No." Then the villain will
undertake to show you what he calls the
1lions" and the elephants. and after young
man, through morbid curiosity or through
badness of soul, has seen the "hons" and the
elephants, he will be on enchanted ground.
Look out for these men who move around the
hotels with sleek hats-always sleek hats
terest about your welfare and entertainment.
You are fool if you cannot see through it.
They want your money.
In Chestnut street, Philadelphia, while
was living in that city, an incident occurred
| which was familiar to US there In Chestnut
| street a young man went into a gamblin.
saloon, lost all his property, then blew his
brains out, and before the blood was washed
from the floor by the maid the comrades were
shutting cards again. You see there is more
mercy in the highwayman for the belated
traveller on whose body he heaps the stones,
there is more mercy in the frost for the
| flower that it kills, there is more mercy in the
hurricane that shivers the steamer on the
Long Island coast, than there is mercy in the
heart of gambler for is victim.
|
enness does its worst. The drinking will be
respectable at o'clock in the evening, a little
flushed at 9, laxative and garrulous at 10, at
| IL blasphemous, at 10 the hat falls off, at !
the man falls to the floor asking for more
| drink. Strewn through the drinking saloons
| of the city, fathers, brothers. husbands, SONS
as good as you are by nature, perhaps better.
In the high circles of society it is hushed up.
A merchant prince, if he gets noisy and un-
comfortable, is taken by his fellow jewellers,
who try to get him to bed or take him home,
where he falls fiat in the entry. Do not wake
up the children. They have had disgrace
enough. Do not let them know it. Hush il
up. But sometimes it cannot be hushed up,
when the rum touches the brain and the MAI
becomes thoroughly frenzied. Such a one
came home, having been absent for some
time, and during bis absence his wife had
died, and she lay in the next room prepared
for the obsequies, and he went in and dragged
her by the locks, and shook her out of her
shroud, and pitched her out of the window.
Oh, when rum touches the brain you can
not hush it up. My friends, you see all
around about you the need that something
radical be done. You do not see the worst
In the midnight meetings at London great
multitude has been saved. We want few
hundred Christian men and women to come
down from the highest circles of society te
toll amid these wandering and destitute ones
and kindle up light in the dark alley, even
the gladness of heaven
Do not 60 wrapped in your fine furs and
from your well filled tables with the idea that
pious talk is going to stop the gnawing of an
empty stomach or to warm stockingless feet
Take bread, take raiment, take medicine as
well as take prayer. There is a great deal Of
common sense in what the poor woman said
to the city missionary when he was telling
her how she ought to love God and serve
Him "Oh,n she said, ''if you were as poor
and cold as am, and as hungry, you could
think of nothing else.n
A great deal of what is called Christian
work goes for nothing, for the simple reason
1t is not practical; as after the battle of An
tietam man got out of an ambulance with q
bag of tracts, and he went distributing the
tracts, and George Stuart, one of the besi
Christian men in this country, said to him
@What are you distributing tracts for now
There are 5000 men bleeding to death. Bind
up their wounds and then distribute the
tracts
We want more common sense in Christian
work, taking the bread of this life in one
hand and the bread of the next life in the
other hand. No such inapt work as that done
by the Christian man who, during the last
war, went into hospital with tracts, and
coming to the bed of a man whose legs had
been amputated, gave him q tract on the sin
of dancing. rejoice before God that never
are sympathetic words uttered, never q
prayer offered, never Christian almsgivins
INDUCED in but it is blessed
There is place in Switzerland, have been
told, where the utterance of one word will
bring back 0ecore Of echoes; and I have to
tell you this morning that q sympathetic
word, . kind word. a generous word, q help
full word uttered in the dark places of the